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Brave Search MCP

Brave Search MCP is an MCP server that adds search and knowledge tools to AI assistants such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor. An MCP Server implementation that integrates the Brave Search API, providing, Web Search, Local Points of… It has 130 GitHub stars, is released under the GPL-3.0 license and runs locally with npx -y brave-search-mcp.

github.com/mikechao/brave-search-mcp (opens in a new tab)

Data as of from the GitHub API; description from the project's repository. Report an error

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Install Brave Search MCP

Generated from the server's published package. Replace your-value with your own values.

Claude Desktop

claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-search-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "brave-search-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

Settings > Developer > Edit Config. macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/, Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\. Restart Claude Desktop afterwards.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --env BRAVE_API_KEY=your-value --transport stdio brave-search-mcp -- npx -y brave-search-mcp

Cursor

.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-search-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "brave-search-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

Project file; use ~/.cursor/mcp.json to enable it in every project.

VS Code

.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "brave_api_key",
      "description": "BRAVE_API_KEY",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "brave-search-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "brave-search-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "${input:brave_api_key}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Config formats checked against the official docs on Oct 7, 2026: modelcontextprotocol.io (opens in a new tab), code.claude.com (opens in a new tab), cursor.com (opens in a new tab), code.visualstudio.com (opens in a new tab).

Environment variables

Variables the server reads at startup.

NameRequiredDescription
BRAVE_API_KEYsecretNoShown in the README's example configuration.

Tools (10)

Parsed from the Tools section of the README; check the repository for the current list.

  • brave_web_search
  • query

    The term to search the internet for

  • count

    The number of results to return (max 20, default 10)

  • offset

    The offset for pagination

  • freshness

    Filters search results by when they were discovered

  • brave_image_search
  • brave_news_search
  • brave_local_search
  • brave_video_search
  • brave_llm_context_search

About Brave Search MCP

An MCP Server implementation that integrates the Brave Search API, providing, Web Search, Local Points of Interest Search, Video Search, Image Search, News Search and LLM Context Search capabilities

  • brave-search
  • model-context-protocol
  • news-search
  • video-search
  • web-search
  • image-search
  • mcp
  • mcp-apps
  • openai-apps-sdk

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FAQ

Brave Search MCP FAQ

Still curious? Email info@appsgit.com.

How do I install the Brave Search MCP MCP server?

Add the command npx -y brave-search-mcp to your MCP client: put it in claude_desktop_config.json for Claude Desktop, run claude mcp add for Claude Code, or add it to .cursor/mcp.json (Cursor) or .vscode/mcp.json (VS Code). The snippets on this page are ready to paste.

Is Brave Search MCP free?

The server is open source under the GPL-3.0 license, so running it is free. It needs credentials (BRAVE_API_KEY) for the service it connects to, which may require a paid account.

Is Brave Search MCP actively maintained?

The most recent commit was on May 28, 2026. The latest release is v2.1.0, published Mar 2, 2026. appsgit only lists MCP servers with a commit in the last six months.